It is well known in the art to vary the direction of a stream (or shingle) of packages in the form of folded boxes, cartons, letters and the like while substantially keeping that stream in a same plane for further processing of the packages. Such changes of stream direction require the use of either a relatively complex and cumbersome curved belt conveyor having relatively large radius of curvature or a curved live roller conveyor having a series of adjacent tapered rollers to induce turning of the stream, or an amalgam of such conveyors, as exemplified in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,610,404 and 7,150,352.
Although these curved conveyors suit their needs, they have a fixed direction of curving as well as a fixed curve angle, unless they are made of multiple successive removable sections each of fixed curve angle, which significantly increase the complexity, cost and maintenance of such conveyors. Such transfer mechanisms are generally static in terms of their siting and accordingly are of limited flexibility when alternative conveying arrays need to be adopted, thus requiring significant rearrangement of system elements.
Accordingly, there is a need for a package stream indexer device which obviates or significantly reduces the highlighted problem.